I initially came to Vietnam as an exchange student four years ago and have since settled here. It's been only three months since I launched my YouTube channel, but my channel already has many subscribers who enjoy my videos that introduce Vietnamese culture, good restaurants, and hot places as well as reveal my daily life. Because of them, I am enjoying my Vietnam life even more.

From teenagers to those in their 50s, Vietnamese people are quite familiar withK-Lifestyle.

Vietnamese people are sentimentally similar to South Korean people, so they have a very keen interest in Korean culture.
I think that's probably why Ho Chi Minh City didn't feel overly unfamiliar to me when I first came here.
Young Vietnamese people around my age are mainly interested in K-Pop and K-Beauty, and older people are more interested in Korean TV shows and movies.
By the way, one thing that all Vietnamese people — young or old, male or female — like is definitely Korean food. K-Food has already been widely recognized as a type of food by Vietnamese people, so you can easily find Korean food at supermarkets in Vietnam. And I think that’s why many people in Vietnam are familiar with CJ.

The first MAMA held in Vietnam

There are so many Vietnamese friends around me who love K-Pop, and I heard that tickets for the MAMA had sold out within a minute after they started selling. Probably because of that, there were so many people around the concert venue on the day who didn’t get tickets.
Wanna One fans made up a significant portion of these people, and they were holding placards with Korean letters written on them along with a variety of cheering materials. Watching them await the show in such a manner, I felt as if I was really in South Korea.
I was particularly impressed whenI saw them all sing along to SEVENTEEN and Wanna One songs, and I even felt my heart swell with emotion. Because, although Korean and Vietnamese people are from different cultures and speak different languages, it felt like everyone had become one in those moments.
I hope the MAMA will continue to be held in Vietnam next year, and every year after that.

I'm Soo-chan, an educating creator who teaches five different languages.

I am a recent graduate of Waseda University, and I have lived in Tokyo for about four years.
When I was in university, I happened to work as an announcer and a voice actress, and I had a lot of fun working in broadcasting. And that broadcasting experience helped land me the opportunity to post Korean lesson videos for Japanese beauty platform C Channel.

Japanese people who love K-Popabsolutely love Korea.

There is one thing in common among Japanese people who like K-Pop: their fashion style and demeanor feel very Korean, so much so that one may even assume that they are Koreans.

What's even more interesting is that in addition to them, many of their mothers are also fans of K-Pop, and these women often attend K-Pop concerts held in Tokyo. Well, some of them even visit South Korea more often than me, despite me being Korean.
When witnessing such things,I realize once again that the Korean wave has such a strong influence.

I think K-Pop is not just a music genre, but it also has the power to transform its listeners’ daily lives and lifestyles.

Yokohama Arena is filled with as many as 13,000 audience members.

This was the first time the MAMA was held in Japan, and Japanese people exuded such a heated frenzy over it that the show completely sold out.
There were also so many people outside the concert venue who had come to get a feel of the MAMA. To my surprise, there were some of them who came from Indonesia and Malaysia, and some even from Los Angeles. And that really made me realize that the MAMA is a global music awards ceremony that exemplifies the diversity of the world.
Although the audience members for the show had different appearances, nationalities, and professions, they all went crazy together watching the performances, and I think that’s a great thing.
I want to convey to you the exciting energy that I felt at the 2017 MAMA via my vlog.

as reported by Dongdong, a YouTuber who is Wang Hong(the Chinese word for “Internet celebrity”)

I’m Dongdong and I help spread Korean culture on China's top five social media platforms.

I came to China to study when I was a kid, and ever since, I often got the impression that South Korea and China are so close yet so far away.
I think that was because there are some biases and misunderstandings about each other's culture.
So, with the aim to iron out such misconceptions, I started my own show.

To my surprise, however, I found many people enjoying my show. So as a result, despite currently living in South Korea, I now have a job where I go back and forth between Shanghai and Beijing delivering Korean culture and news to Chinese people.
Every week, approximately 4 million people watch my show via Miaopai, Youku, bilibili, Weibo, and WeChat, and it was a great delight for me to be able to report the scenes of the Hong Kong MAMA to them.

The MAMA week came to a finale inHong Kong.

When it comes to Korean culture, young people in mainland China and Hong Kong, from teenagers to those in their early twenties, like K-Pop the most, while those aged between 20 and 30 prefer Korean TV shows.
In particular, tvN’s TV show “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God,” which ended earlier this year, is still popular among them.

So, when I wrote a post saying that I was going to Hong Kong, everyone who read it asked me if I was going there to attend the MAMA.

Music makes one!Live New, CJ!

I arrived in Hong Kong on the 30th of November, and that was the day that the 2017 MAMA professional categories ceremony was held.
Because I had thought of the MAMA as an awards ceremony until then where only musicians get awarded, it was refreshing and surprising to find out that the MAMA also features an awards ceremony for professional categories for visual & art directors, choreographers, engineers, composers, and producers. I learned the true reason why the MAMA is known as Asia’s Grammy Awards.

The convention held at AsiaWorld-Expo was also excellent. The O’live Young booth and the bibigo booth attracted great interest in particular, and visiting these boothes, I learned that many people get closer to Korean culture through experiencing K-Beauty and K-Food.

The performances I saw at the MAMA were beyond description. There were even people who cried while watching the performances. The power of music seems to be truly amazing.

At the 2017 MAMA, I was able to feel that all audience members had become one through K-Culture and K-Lifestyle despite being from different countries and speaking different languages. For that reason, I hope I will also be given the opportunity to cover the 2018 MAMA.